Independents moving toward Dems and away from GOP

[lancdem]

This is from Ruy Texiera's blog:

The consensus reaction to last night's State of the Union address was that it was a pretty partisan speech where the president relentlessly plugged the GOP position on practically everything, from Iraq to health savings accounts to making the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent, and not-so-subtly taunted the Democrats for their opposition to these positions.
Is such a partisan approach really wise? Perhaps it would be if the country was already leaning Republican and voters in the center simply needed to be reminded to find their inner Republican. But that does not appear to be the case.
In fact, there is an abundance of recent data that suggests the opposite: the country is leaning Democratic and voters in the center are in serious danger of finding their inner Democrat if the Republicans don't watch out.
The domestic and foreign policy views of Democrats and independents are converging on one another and pulling away from the Republicans. That is, it’s not just that Democrats and Republicans are becoming polarized against one another–the conventional wisdom–but that Democrats and independents (two-thirds of the electorate) are becoming polarized against Republicans. And it's not just issues: a January Pew Research Center report also shows that the basic ideological views of independents are now much closer to Democrats than Republicans.
These leanings of independents even extend to the bedrock political indicator of partisanship: which party does an individual identify with or lean towards? According to the most recent CBS News/New York Times poll, the Democrats now have a four point lead on party ID (32 percent to 28 percent), even before independents are asked which party they lean towards.

http://www.emergingdemocraticmajority.com

[saltpoint]

1. Some pretty good news there --

-- thanks for posting this.

[lancdem]

3. You're welcome

:)

[Beetwasher]

2. The Admin's Intention To NOT Shift Back to the Middle in the Campaign

is an ominous development. They must know they only came close to winning the first time because the Chimp ran as a moderate. They are apparently not going to pretend even that much this time around. I see only one obvious implication of that decision; they KNOW the fix is in and think they can't lose, thus they can run on their radical agenda and then claim they have a mandate for it.

[lancdem]

4. That's a disturbing possibility

and one that can't be ignored.

[Valjean]

5. conservatives are moving

Well even traditional conservatives are moving away from Bush. To me this is absoluetly AMAZING and represents a true breakdown in the GOP. The old guard is pissed that their party has been hijacked by a bunch of fundamentalist, zealout, spendamaniacs.

Till now, it seems that they weren't very willing to speak out. Now they seem to be in revolt against Bush over his recent proposals.

It will be interesting to see if these issues manifest themselves in any congressional races. Will the conservatives "punish" the new guard by running independent candidates against the fundamentalist GOP offerings????

The real issue that is shaking down here is that both Democrats and Republicans seem pissed about illegal immigration, non-immigrant vias, free trade and globablization. Time to turn the clock back and send all these foreigners home.

[Beetwasher]

6. Huh?

"Time to turn the clock back and send all these foreigners home."

Care to explain that xenophobic statement?

[Valjean]

8. YES, I WOULD

EVERYONE who is in this country ILLEGALLY should be sent home. That includes people who are on expired visas and illegal immigrants.

No other country on Earth tolerate such blatant violations of their law. Legal immigration is GREAT. We are a country of immigrants and that should continue ALWAYS in measured amounts.

Foreigners DO NOT have the right to unilaterally decide to IGNORE US immigration law. A debate over the numbers of immigrants is allowed is certainly reasonable. But amnesty for such blatant law breakers is out of the question. It only encourages MORE people to violate our laws.

[BeFree]

7. Since 1998

The pugs have pretty much steered the course of the American ship. People can see that the crazy skipper is gonna crash us into the rocks unless we get his hands off the wheel.

Are we better off than we were 6 years ago? Most people don't think so and when look back they see that the downward turn coincides with the pukes taking over the senate.

The pukes are toast. Three day old toast.